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A new story in The Wall Street Journal confirms all my worst suspicions about Obama's cave on ozone regulations, namely that it was a) a crass political move, b) driven by new Chief of Staff Bill Daley, and c) based on daft political logic.
Savor the irony of these three paragraphs:
On Aug. 16, Mr. Daley met with environmental, public-health and other groups to discuss the Environmental Protection Agency rule that would tighten air-quality standards. At one point he lamented that the issue couldn't be worked out by consensus with industry, as the White House did with the auto industry on fuel-economy rules.
When the American Lung Association mentioned a poll showing public support for EPA standards, Mr. Daley appeared uninterested, according to one person in the room. "He literally cut the person off and said 'I don't give a [expletive] about the poll'," this person said. A senior White House official said Mr. Daley wanted to hear arguments about the substance of the regulation and its impact, not political arguments, and he was uninterested in all polls on this topic.
The same day, Mr. Daley met with industry groups, who gave the White House a map showing counties that would be out of compliance with the Clean Air Act if the stricter standards were put in place. The map showed that the rule would affect areas in the politically important 2012 election states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio.
He wants to hear arguments about the substance of the rule … like how it would affect swing states in the next election!
Oh, man. So much to unpack here.
There's a kind of implicit conventional wisdom in U.S. politics, which even lots of liberals seem to accept, that conflates caving to conservatives and industry with political "realism." You saw a lot of that when Obama announced his ozone decision — liberals scolding other liberals not to be such dippy idealists, to get with the program and realize that Obama has to make tough decisions and pick his battles, etc. etc.
But if you ask me, the kind of reflexive pro-business-lobby attitude that Bill Daley brings to the White House is as naive and politically clueless as anything you'll ever find in the blogosphere. I mean, he regrets that the ozone rule couldn't be worked out "by consensus with industry"? Anyone who would think that must be spectacularly ignorant of the power industry's unbroken 40-year record of hostility toward regulatory restraints of any kind. Has he not noticed the massive, coordinated PR effort against EPA in the last year? They sure sound ready to find "consensus," huh?
More to the point, though, the notion that this individual sop to industry can meaningfully affect the electoral dynamics of swing states demonstrates an almost pathological ignorance of post-truth politics.
The logic seems to go like this: If the ozone regs had passed, several swing states would be put into noncompliance. That would have involved some fines and prompted the need for aggressive state implementation policies (SIPs). That might have upset voters, who would then be less likely to vote for Obama and, e.g., Michigan Sen. Carl Levin (D). It might have upset businesses, who would then be less likely to give money to those candidates. Now that the White House has delayed the rule, those voters won't be upset, so they'll be more likely to vote the right way, and businesses won't be upset, so they'll be more likely to give money.
I hope it's obvious, just from laying it out, how absurd this kind of reasoning is, especially when it comes to voters. It relies on the presumption that there is a neutral media which will report to voters in those states that something was going to happen, but now isn't, and that those voters will be attentive enough to understand that, and that the knowledge will meaningfully affect their voting behavior.
But there is no such media. There are no referees. And voters are not nearly that sophisticated. They assess politicians based on crude stereotypes, and when politicians do something counter to those stereotypes, voters simply don't notice. That's more true than ever in today's fractured media landscape. The kind of people who get their news from Fox are never, ever going to give Obama credit for blocking regulations.
Obama cut taxes more than Bush did in his first term. Yet he's still known — even among most Democratic voters! — as a tax-and-spend, big-government liberal. And this one-off regulatory decision is supposed to cut through the clutter?
The case is only slightly less ridiculous when it comes to business. Yes, (some) businesses have more concrete interests involved than voters. They're more likely to be aware of the regs and more likely to be aware that this one was delayed. But think about it: What business owner or business lobby is going to say, "You know, the toxics rule and the transport rule are awful, but Obama did delay this one other rule for a few years, so let's give him some money!" Is this going to diminish the hostility or money coming from the Chamber of Commerce one iota?
This kind of back-room, small-bore, wheeler-dealer bullsh*t is what passes for political maneuvering in much of D.C. That seems to be Daley's metier. But that doesn't mean we have to take it seriously. Obama stuck his finger in EPA's eye and left thousands of people to a few more years of ill health for political advantage that is almost certainly chimerical. It may not be the biggest thing in the world, but it's a sign that they don't get post-truth politics at all.


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The Impact Club rewards your efforts to recruit your Christian friends as members of the League. Unlike other clubs that you have to join, this one is automatic. As soon as two people have joined The Pocket Testament League with your referral number,* you're a member of the Impact Club! By getting your friends involved, you can multiply your personal ministry 100 times or more. Imagine the impact we can make for Jesus Christ if every League member recruited just five more members in the coming year, and each one of them recruits others to share their faith!
We know that the motivation to get others involved is not driven by human awards, but by a sincere desire to reach the world for Christ, with eternal rewards. At the same time, we think it's only fair that people who actively encourage others to share their faith deserve a little something to recognize their efforts.
The Impact Club involves four levels of achievement, with a special reward at each level. Regular League members and Speaker Reps/Pastors have different levels to keep things fair for everyone.
You'll be notified by E-mail as you reach each level. We've arranged with several vendors some unique reward premiums at a reasonable cost to the ministry, and they're yours FREE as our way of saying "thanks" for your enthusiasm. The premiums will be sent to you automatically, at no cost to you. All you need to do is what you've already been doing: share your faith and your enthusiasm for this faith-sharing ministry with others.
Important: Remember that the only way new members can be linked to you is if they enter your member ID as the "referral number" when they join, so make sure they get that number! It's printed on the stickers that ship with each Gospel order, on your receipt letters, and if you forget it you can view it or have it sent to you automatically by E-mail by clicking here.
Current awards are:
The Bronze level is reached with 2 signups for regular members, and 15 for pastors and speaker reps. At this level, we'll send you a beautiful cloissone metal Pocket Reminder that you can keep in your pocket as a permanent reminder to share a Gospel each day. This durable and high quality metal token, about the size of a quarter, can be placed in your pocket or wherever you keep your small change as a constant reminder to share your faith. Die struck from a copper bronze surface and hand-filled with a glass-like mixture, each Pocket Reminder is fired in a kiln, more is color added and then it's fired again, a two-step process especially designed to ensure that colors don't bleed. Individually hand polished and gold plated, this is a keepsake you'll appreciate for years.
The Silver level is reached with 10 signups for regular members and 35 signups for pastors and speaker reps. At this level, we'll send you a high quality two-tone ceramic coffee mug. Use this gift to invite a Christian friend to share friendly conversation over a cup of coffee as you explain the League and how you've been blessed by learning to share your faith with others.
At this level, you'll receive an elegant leather journal that you can use as a prayer journal, devotional journal, or any other need that you have. It features a Bible verse on each page to inspire you as you use it, as well as a slide tab closure and a ribbon marker to help you quickly find the page where you made your last journal entry.
The Platinum level is our highest level, reached with 60 signups for regular members and 125 for pastors and speaker reps. At this level, we want to reward you with the finest gift we could think of: a Bible. This quality Bible is a gift you'll treasure for many years.
It comes with quality leather binding and many special features, such as the words of Christ in red, built-in concordance, introductions to each Bible book, maps, and much more.
* Signups refer to members in good standing who have joined using your member ID as the referral number and are measured from June 1, 2006; the date the Impact Club was launched.

subset: commoncrawl


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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States tortures prisoners in violation of international law, former President Carter said Wednesday.
Former President Carter says the U.S. "has abandoned the basic principle of human rights."
"I don't think it. I know it," Carter told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
"Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights," Carter said. "We've said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo, and we've said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime to which they are accused."
Carter also said President Bush creates his own definition of human rights.
Carter's comments come on the heels of an October 4 article in The New York Times disclosing the existence of secret Justice Department memorandums supporting the use of "harsh interrogation techniques." These include "head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures," according to the Times.
The White House last week confirmed the existence of the documents but would not make them public.
Responding to the newspaper report Friday, Bush defended the techniques used, saying, "This government does not torture people."
Asked about Bush's comments, Carter said, "That's not an accurate statement if you use the international norms of torture as has always been honored -- certainly in the last 60 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated.
"But you can make your own definition of human rights and say we don't violate them, and you can make your own definition of torture and say we don't violate them." Watch Blitzer's interview with the former president »
After reading a transcript of Carter's remarks, a senior White House official said, "Our position is clear. We don't torture."
The official said, "It's just sad to hear a former president speak like that."
Carter also criticized some of the 2008 Republican presidential candidates, calling former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani "foolish" for his contention the United States should be open to use force on Iran.
"I hope that he doesn't become president and try to impose his conviction that we need to go to war with Iran," Carter said.
The Giuliani campaign declined to comment on Carter's criticism.
The former president didn't spare the rest of the GOP field either.
"They all seem to be outdoing each other in who wants to go to war first with Iran, who wants to keep Guantanamo open longer and expand its capacity -- things of that kind," Carter said.
"They're competing with each other to appeal to the ultra-right-wing, war-mongering element in our country, which I think is the minority of our total population."
Carter declined to say which Republican candidate he feared the most.
"If I condemn one of them, it might escalate him to the top position in the Republican ranks," he said.
Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois also drew Carter's criticism for refusing recently to pledge to withdraw all troops from Iraq by the end of their first terms if they win the presidency in 2008.
"I disagree with their basic premise that we'll still be there; I think the American people want out," Carter said. "If there is an unforeseen development where Iraqi people request American presence over a period of time I think that would possibly be acceptable, but that's not my personal preference." E-mail to a friend
CNN's Alexander Mooney contributed to this report.
All About Human Rights Policy • Torture


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Mount St. Helens Is Waking Up!
News story originally written on October 5, 2004
Mount St. Helens, a volcano on the west coast of the United States, has been quiet for 18 years. But in the last week it has not been quiet at all! It has been puffing steam and ash and a flow of lava may be on the way.
On September 29th, 2004 a large number of small earthquakes in the area warned scientists that the volcano was changing. Two days later, researchers flying over the volcano noticed a bulge at the top and large cracks along the surface. Later that day steam and ash poured from the area with the cracks for almost half an hour. On Monday the volcano puffed more steam and ash.
Scientists say that a larger eruption is likely. Clues suggest that hot magma was probably not racing toward the volcano's surface on Friday when the ash was released into the air. However, scientists continue searching for clues to whether magma is on its way!


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Occupational hazards are often accepted as inherent risks of the construction industry, but that doesn't mean they have to stay that way forever. New technology may offer safer options through design itself.
"Some of the most pressing occupational health hazard risks in construction" are associated with masonry operations, asphalt roofing, and welding, wrote Deborah Young-Corbett in an article recently accepted by the Journal of Civil Engineering and Management.
To reduce these health risks to construction workers, Young-Corbett, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech and a member of the university's Myers-Lawson School of Construction since 2007, has studied much of the existing literature, identifying numerous gaps or problems in the industry's current construction practices.
Young-Corbett is working in a new field of engineering known as Prevention through Design or PtD. The optimal method of preventing occupational illnesses, injuries, and fatalities is to "design out" the hazards and risks; thereby, eliminating the need to control them during work operations, Young-Corbett said. This approach involves the design of tools, equipment, systems, work processes, and facilities in order to reduce, or eliminate, occupational hazards and environmental risks.
She is teaching these new state-of-the-art design tactics in her classes, providing her undergraduate and graduate students with a better understanding of how to improve the long-term success of the construction industry. Young-Corbett is a certified industrial hygienist, safety professional, and hazardous materials manager with a background in environmental sciences, human factors engineering, and industrial engineering.
In 2008, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) launched the PtD initiative in an attempt to mitigate hazards in the construction sector in the design stage. Yet, four years later, Young-Corbett's review of the industry's safety procedures shows some of the "barriers" to PtD adoption and she identifies strategies for the construction industry to use to improve its health records.
Young-Corbett provides evidence in her assessment of the industry of a "gap" in the PtD initiative that does not address the approaches to "occupational health hazard control," with the key word being "health." These "health risks arise when workers are exposed to chemical, biological, or energetic hazards that might lead to various illnesses or fatalities," says Young-Corbett.
For example, additional changes in tool selection in masonry could alleviate much of the health risks, according to Young-Corbett. With a masonry operation, a key issue is to reduce the silica dust produced when sawing. Now that wet methods are available for hand-operated grinders used for surface finishing and cutting slots, these devices can keep operators' exposures to silica below Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) limits, she noted.
Construction supervisors should also be advocating hand operated surface grinders that are made with better vacuum dust collection systems, also reducing an operator's exposure to silica.
In roofing, the workers' exposure to asphalt fumes and vapors lead to both acute and chronic effects. Lung cancer is at an elevated risk for asphalt roofers. But, as Young-Corbett argued in her paper, delivery of hot asphalt to a job site via a tanker, eliminates the on-site kettle operation for handling and heating the asphalt, and makes a difference to the health of the worker.
Similar relatively simple changes in the practice of welding can also make an impact in the decline of health-related problems. The use of local exhaust ventilation systems can prevent worker exposure to metal fumes during welding, Young-Corbett wrote in her article in the Journal of Civil Engineering and Management.
In general, Young-Corbett said there are still needs for designs for better tools or materials, but in other cases, "effective tools exist but are not widely adopted within the industry…there is a need to elucidate the barriers to PtD adoption and to identify strategies for improved diffusion within the construction industry."
"The further refinement and marketing of PtD solutions such as the smokeless welding gun, the low-smoke welding wire, and the local-exhaust ventilation systems for welding are needed," she asserted.


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Geek is a Global Language – But Twitter is Not (yet)
by Beth Blecherman on December 21, 2009 at 4:56 am
During the blogger embark on the USS Nimitz this past May, I enjoyed learning how social media is being used aboard an aircraft carrier at sea. Similarly, when I was invited to join the Traveling Geeks trip to Paris, I looked forward to experiencing social media in France first hand. Especially with – as fellow Geek Matthew Buckland referred to – a "top secret, Illuminati-type organization". Except we were not secret about anything as we all share openly our thoughts online.
True to expectations, only moments into the first Traveling Geeks French start-ups meetings and LeWeb discussions, the similarities and differences of social media around the globe quickly came to light. Similarities were easy to see in the programming and features of application development, which quickly proved to a be a global language. As for differences, they fell primarily into three buckets (with comedy insight provided by a Current TV video on the bottom of this post):
1. Where are the girl geeks in Paris? I know there are girl geeks in Paris; I found a link to my favorite Girl Geek Dinner organization in Paris. I did enjoy talking with Anne-Celine Jeanneau from Zoomorama (pictured, right) at the Paris Digital Content Companies Incubator. While fellow Traveling Geek Eliane Fiolet lives in the US now, she was born in France and is one of the most knowledgeable geeks I know! I was thrilled to see Geraldine Le Meur on the LeWeb stage, someone who ranks TOPS in my Tech Mom Twitter list.
When I visit different countries, I don't keep track of how many women versus men I am meeting with. But I do enjoy seeing women globally communicate their strong, social media voice. In Silicon Valley, I connect with girl geeks through BlogHer, She's Geeky, Anita Borg Institure, Women 2.0, Girl Geek Dinners and Girls in Tech (and more). While I don't expect every area to have so many groups, I do enjoy meeting with local girl geek organizations while I am traveling and sharing ideas. Renee Blodgett and Eliane Fiolet worked hard to have diversity in the Traveling Geeks crew. Back in the US, BlogHer is researching into how women use social media: "BlogHer Team to Bring Research and Insights About How Women Use Social Media, Blogs to the White House and Republican Leadership".
2. European Geeks Out Style Silicon Valley Geeks: While Silicon Valley geeks put on a clean tee shirt for tech conferences, European geeks take it up a notch. Here is a random geek waiting in line for LeWeb. I told him I was chronicling European Geek Chic. He looked confused but smiled for the camera. To top it off, he and many other Euro-geeks paired the geek uniform of jeans with a nice pair of (non-sneaker) shoes.
Just to keep up with the style, I put on every black and stylish piece of clothing I had. If I had time, I would of shopped from the assortment of beautiful french scarves to take my outfit up a notch. Luckily I am back home in my gym clothes, which is my preferred blogging uniform.
3. Where are the conversations? Person to Person or Twitter to Twitter?: In Silicon Valley, online social networking ID names rival business cards as a means for introduction and maintaining contact; I introduce myself as "TechMama on Twitter". My perspective is that Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are required applications for global business interaction, especially for those wanting to do business in the US. These applications are becoming the center of the conversation, with complimentary applications being built around them.
Because I was using Twitter to microblog the Traveling Geeks trip to Paris, the first thing I requested from any startup/business person I met was their Twitter ID. I also wanted to add people to my International tech Twitter list. But not everyone had Twitter ID's. I finally got up the courage to ask Jean-Baptiste Soufron, a tech savvy Lawyer and tech entrepreneur in Paris , "Why aren't more French entrepreneurs on Twitter?". Soufron then gave an answer that hit the nail on the head: "Maybe they will use Twitter later, but today Twitter is not big enough outside of the US to be used by businesses". He later told me that Facebook in France is mostly used for online social interaction. Or as he said with a charming french accent "Facebook is for flirting".
I found that websites, email and personal phone calls are popular in Paris for Business to Consumer and Consumer to Business communication. The business culture of Paris favors person to person conversations, a natural priority which I found impressive. The French entrepreneurs on Twitter were power users who not only had their own Twitter ID's but also were following the Traveling Geeks conversation in real time.
My epiphany from this trip was that I exist in a high-tech, Silicon Valley bubble surrounded by blogger, geek, and social media contacts who are not only on Twitter but also actively using it to harness the power of a global community and interact with business brands. The Traveling Geeks themselves are global and all plugged in. As the lively, witty and Scottish Ewan said in his post, "the group also had Belgium, South Africa, France and Morocco represented ". Traveling Geeks are pictured below: (front row starting from left) Ewan Spence, Olivier Ezratty , Eliane Fiolet, Amanda Coolong, Beth Blecherman, Renee Blodgett, Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz, Matthew Buckland, Kim-Mai Cutler. Back row (starting from left): Jerome Tranié, Sky Schuyler, Tom Foremski , Robin Wauters, Frederic Lardinois, David Spark.
But not everyone in the group was surprised about the different social media adaption rates that exist across the globe. It seemed as though the Silicon Valley Geeks may have been most shocked (See posts by Robert Scoble , David Spark's, Olivier Ezratty and others on Traveling Geeks Website). Social media adaption rates vary not only by community within the United States, but also globally. Looking back at my B to C communication in the US, I also realized that many of my friends (power consumers) don't use Twitter as well and are just starting to use Facebook.
The challenge for global companies that may not have a high percentage of local customers using social media is "when should they set up a flag on social media sites like Twitter"? Setting up social media for businesses is a commitment: when a company sets up an ID on any social network, they need to have a monitoring, messaging and engagement policy to support it.
Is online social media use in Silicon Valley really that different from that in France or globally?
The website Global Web Index created a handy graphic (below) posted November 26, 2009 about global social web involvement. This chart backs up my observations that globally only a small percentage of early adopters are involved in online social media. I found the chart via a Mashable post by Adam Ostrow written on Dec. 4th. Click Here to see the PDF version.
Some key figures from the Global Web Index for France and the United States are listed below:
France: 9.5% have written their their own blog and 3.8% use a micro-blogging service.
United States: 12.8% have written their own blog while 7.0% use a micro-blogging service.
So while the United States is slightly ahead in micro-blogging and blogging, the figures show that global adoption of social media is in the early stages.
So how should global companies participate in online social media, keeping in mind that not all their customers will be there?
1. Social Media Engagement Plan: Global conversations are taking place on social media, so even if a companies' customers are not on social media yet – at some point they will join in the conversation. But each business, no matter how big or small, should have an overall social media engagement plan that includes a way to "monitor" the feedback and "engage" back in the conversation. There are many examples of mistakes that have been made by employees inappropriately using social media on the job, so the employee policies and social media training are key. But the first step for any social media engagement plan would be to determine which social media platforms (i.e. Twitter, Facebook Page etc), how to monitor/share (i.e. Seesmic, HootSuite, Radian6 etc) and customer feedback (i.e Get Satisfaction).
There are many subject matter experts globally that share their knowledge. The fearless leaders of the Traveling Geeks have global experience with social media: Renee Blodgett of Magic Sauce Media, Eliane Fiolet of the global Ubergizmo, Phil Jeudy and Sky led the Traveling Geeks through the tour. I have gained valuable social media insight from following Renee Blodgett and gadget insight from Eliane Fiolet. But the first place I would start when looking for individuals to provide social media insight is the Traveling Geeks "Meet the Geeks" web page. Click here to read posts on the Traveling Geeks Website.
Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells from the Social Media Club had a house filled with bloggers covering LeWeb. Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, who were also at LeWeb, have a book titled "Trust Agents" that discusses using the web to build influence and trust. Tara Hunt was also at LeWeb; Her book Whuffie Factor discusses using the power of social networks to build your business Brian Solis has books on Public Relations but also wrote a post about "Twitter 101 for Business". Jeremiah Owyiang from Altimeter Group spoke at LeWeb on the subject of "Real Time Web is Not Fast Enough". The Money Roundtable at LeWeb was moderated by Dave McClure and had a interesting set of panelists including David Hornik and Dan'l Lewin. A full list of LeWeb speakers can be found here.
Back in Silicon Valley, Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell and Founder of Altimeter Group, just recently posted "New study: Deep brand engagement correlates with financial performance" . Just recently Charlene helped provide insight to me on ways to monitor Twitter hashtags. Guy Kawaski always has insight to share on social media through his website, multiple books and Alltop subject areas. Robert Scoble provides candid social media input across multiple platforms. I have gained insight on the Far East social media markets from Christine Lu, Rebecca A. Fannin and Kaiser Kuo. Neenz is one of the social media pulses of Hawaii. But when it comes to mom bloggers, I gain insight from my fellow Silicon Valley Moms Group bloggers.
2. Language interfaces and translation applications can help unify adaption of social media globally: Rebecca Fannin's post about local language search in China brings to light the issue of language as the challenge for global social media and search applications. To enable social media applications to be used globally, language interfaces such as the one Microsoft built for aboriginal communities can be used. Twitter is starting to offer support in different languages and Twitter translation applications are being written, such as Twanslate that uses Google AJAX Language API.
3. Global conversations are different, even if they take place in the same social media application: This experience has helped me understand that global conversations styles are different; I suggest that all social media travelers be sensitive and spend time listening first then sharing recommendations. Those immersed in social media need to understand that they are part of a small but influential group of early adopters. On the other hand – if foreign companies want to meet with bloggers or social media journalists then it's important to understand their world – which is very online social media centric. Understand that many of us are connected through multiple social media outlets including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other online applications – and are looking to use those channels to connect and share information with our followers about companies we meet. We prepare for meetings by locating social media IDs for each meeting attendee and researching before the meeting – or first thing when we sit down. .
Many technologists and entrepreneurs are still are not clear on the value proposition of online social networking; confusion which is best captured by this video from Current TV titled: "The Twouble With Twitter":
4. The Kids will Inherit The Earth: Current TV's "The Twouble With Twitter" video leads me to my third point. My 10 year old son found this video while searching around on iTunes for fun podcasts and videos. He was on iTunes because he was taking a break from editing a video he filmed using a point & shoot digital camera. He saw the word Twitter on the video name and decided to show it to his Twitter addicted Mother.
I'm a mother of three young boys who interact and experiment every day with technology. Watching them explore, it's obvious to me that the future is online as kids naturally engage with technology. While we see social media involvement percentages that may be lower than geeks like me would hope for, these numbers apply to a generation that was raised either without computers (eek – they actually used Typewriters) or used computers when they were older. As the new generation of kids/teens/college kids enter the workforce, we will see the online social media involvement percentages increase and increase.
This post is written by Beth Blecherman of TechMamas.com. Reproduction of this article with permission only. This was a sponsored trip organized by the Traveling Geeks. Disclosure policy can be found on the Traveling Geeks website. Bitly short URL for this post is http://bit.ly/8IHFbC.


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WASHINGTON – There are lots of diets out there. But the healthiest of all may be a nutritional lifestyle that dates back centuries.
Studies have shown the traditional Greek diet is one of the healthiest on the planet — in sharp contrast to the modern-day western way of eating with its emphasis on processed foods and vegetable oils.
"It is really the Mediterranean lifestyle and it is the way I grew up," says celebrity chef Cat Cora, who was raised in a Greek-American family in Mississippi, a state with one of the highest obesity rates in the nation.
While other kids were eating fried okra, she was munching on steamed artichokes with olive oil and lemon. It was a diet rich in fish, vegetables, fruits and, above all, olive oil in place of butter, corn oil, lard or cream.
These days, Cora — a star of the "Iron Chef" TV series and a mother of four — is touring the country promoting the style of eating she has enjoyed all her life.
She says not only is it delicious, but there are also numerous health benefits.
"You don't have to take a lot of supplements, you don't have to be on any yo-yo diets and things, you just eat a lifestyle that promotes health naturally," she says.
Dr. Artemis Simopoulus, president of the Center for Genetics, Nutrition and Health, has been looking into the effects of the traditional Greek diet for decades. During a long career at the National Institutes of Health, she followed up on studies conducted just before and immediately after World War II that found the people of Crete had lower levels of heart disease and cancer and lived longer than residents of five other European countries and Japan.
Simopoulus, who was born and raised in Greece, says she realized it was the presence of all those omega 3 fatty acids and anti-oxidants that gave the Greek diet an edge.
In her book, the Omega Diet, she urges a return to that traditional way of eating. She says our modern diet emphasizes omega 6 vegetable oils to the exclusion of omega 3s, and the two need to be brought into balance.
Simopoulus, who has advised the federal government and the White House on nutrition, says "current western diets have almost 20 to 50 times as much omega 6 as omega 3 coming from corn oil, safflower — the vegetable oils."
Even the diet of modern day Greece is not immune, When Greece joined the European Community, it became obligated to import vegetable oils, which resulted in a big dietary change.
"A country that had a perfect diet was pushed into vegetable oils and processed food, which was very destructive," says Simopoulus, who is now helping the Greek government convince the public to return to the nutritional ways of the past.
She says the biggest step for those who want to follow the traditional Greek diet is to swap out those vegetable oils for olive oil, and eat more fish and less meat, which, these days, almost always comes from animals fed a diet high in omega 6 fatty acids.
Simopoulus is also pushing all of us to eat more green, leafy vegetables. In Crete, they have long eaten a vegetable called purslane, which is full of omega 3s. But Simopoulos says leaf lettuce and spinach, which are common in the U.S., work almost as well.
For more information, check out this study on seven countries, complete with charts, published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
Follow @WTOP and @WTOPliving on Twitter.


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Duane Allman, 'Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective' – Album Review
Before the Allman Brothers Band hit it big, guitarist Duane Allman had played with Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Boz Scaggs and others. After their breakthrough live album 'At Fillmore East,' he continued working as a busy session musician, clocking gigs with Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, Derek & the Dominos and Laura Nyro. Through it all he established himself as one of rock's great instrumentalists; a master axman with a show-stopping signature style who'd step out of the spotlight and let others shine.
The seven-disc, 129-track 'Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective' documents his short, but surprisingly packed career (Allman died in a motorcycle accident in 1971 at the age of 24). The box is arranged more or less chronologically, so it unspools as Allman's musical history, from his scrappy early days in garage and R&B cover groups to the groundbreaking southern rock he played with the Allman Brothers Band.
And those early days were a bit rough. The first disc is made up almost entirely of familiar covers like 'Turn on Your Love Light,' 'What'd I Say,' 'Crossroads' and even the Beatles' 'Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)' by forgotten groups the Escorts, the Allman Joys and Hour Glass.
But Allman's distinct playing and burning leads eventually reveal themselves, giving way to his much-heralded session work with '60s soul-music giants who recorded at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala. He still played cover songs -- 'Light My Fire' (Clarence Carter), 'Hey Jude' (Pickett), 'The Weight' (Franklin) -- but his fluid solos, and particularly his searing slide work, give them their own personalities. Allman's greatest work, though, can be found in the band he co-led with brother Gregg -- 'Skydog' doesn't overload on Allman Brothers material; instead, it collects a handful of representative tracks -- and in Derek & the Dominos with Eric Clapton (ditto).
As with any project of this size and scope, 'Skydog' plods at times. While the early recordings from the pre-Allman Brothers groups he played in with Gregg offer reference points, there's nothing too remarkable about their covers of '60s garage-band staples like 'Spoonful' and 'Shapes of Things.' And the zigzagging among the disparate artists Allman worked with later in the decade -- at one point, 'Skydog' tears through Ronnie Hawkins, Lulu and Johnny Jenkins -- can seem somewhat unfocused. But Allman's career was like that: occasionally messy, often brilliant. 'Skydog' serves that legacy well.


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Dr. Death Rides Again
Original ArticleWhat do cicadas have in common with Jack Kevorkian? They share a cacophonous anniversary. In June, after 17 years, cicadas are expected to crawl from underground across the Midwest. These grim insects produce such a din that just one can overpower other sounds. Also in June, exactly 17 years after he first made international headlines for assisting the suicide of 54-year-old Janet Adkins, Jack Kevorkian is scheduled to emerge from prison. Already, his release has become a media circus, likely soon to produce a din of its own.
Kevorkian's release may actually be bad news for assisted-suicide advocacy. Since his imprisonment for the 1998 murder of Thomas Youk, advocates for assisted-suicide legalization have strived mightily to put a benign, professional veneer on the hard business of authorizing doctors to intentionally participate in the termination of their patients' lives. With Kevorkian in prison, his gaunt visage was no longer the public face of the movement. Today's activists are far more likely to be impeccably dressed, upper middle class women who spout focus-group-vetted sound bites. (Hence the effort by the former Hemlock Society—renamed Compassion & Choices—to convince the media to drop the descriptive term "assisted suicide" for the pabulum phrase "aid in dying.")
Contemporary advocates also have worked hard to make assisted suicide appear bland. The so-called "medical model" permitted by Oregon's Death with Dignity law has been ubiquitously touted in recent years by assisted-suicide promoters as an approach to mercy killing that can avoid a Kevorkian-style slippery slope. Legalization bills have been repeatedly
filed in Hawaii, Vermont (where legislators killed them), and California, which is in the midst of its fourth political battle in eight years over assisted-suicide legalization.
But with Kevorkian soon to appear on 60 Minutes and in other high-profile media venues, the assisted-suicide movement will find it much harder to conceal the many similarities between Dr. Death's approach during the 1990s and the legalized Kevorkianism being carried out in Oregon today.
Take, for example, one of the primary "protective" guidelines or safeguards for permitting death-doctoring in Oregon. In 1990, when Kevorkian began conducting post-mortem press conferences, he assured the nation his "patients" had to be terminally ill, and his attorney maintained that Kevorkian required proof of a terminal condition. As the body count mounted, the press maintained the myth. Even today, Kevorkian is often described as the doctor who assisted the suicides of the terminally ill.
Because assisted suicide is illegal in Michigan, however, authorities couldn't take Kevorkian's word for it, and had autopsies performed revealing that more than half of Kevorkian's 130 known victims were not terminally ill. Most were disabled with conditions such as multiple sclerosis. In fact, several had no serious physical illnesses that could be determined upon autopsy.
Under Oregon's assisted-suicide law, to qualify for assisted suicide, a patient is supposed to have a terminal condition, defined as a life expectancy of six months or less. As of the last official report, there have been 292 reported deaths under the law that transformed the crime of assisted suicide into a medical treatment. And how many of those who died actually had a terminal condition? Nobody knows. Oregon does not require autopsies of people who die there by legalized assisted suicide, so we don't know their actual underlying conditions.
Yet the words of one Oregon physician who regularly assists suicides indicate a cavalier attitude towards the law. Dr. Peter Rasmussen, an advisory board member of the Oregon chapter of Compassion & Choices, acknowledges his involvement in deaths numbering in the double digits. He said that predicting life expectancy is rife with inaccuracy but dismissed that as unimportant. He explained,
[W]e can easily be 100 percent off, but I do not think that is a problem. If we say a patient has six months to live and we are off by 100 percent and it is really three months or even twelve months, I do not think the patient is harmed in any way.
Being far off the mark in predicting life expectancy certainly occurred in the case of cancer patient Michael Freeland, who was provided with a prescription for assisted suicide nearly two years before he died naturally. This apparent abuse was not reported by the state but in an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Perhaps the state's failure is due to the fact, as Dr. Katrina Hedberg and others responsible for issuing Oregon's official reports have acknowledged, that the assisted-suicide law does not authorize investigations into how physicians determine their patients' prognoses.
Kevorkian also raised eyebrows in some quarters for having extremely brief relationships with his "patients" before helping them commit suicides. For example, Good Morning America noted that many of the people over whose deaths Kevorkian presided died within 24 hours of meeting him for the first
Similar all-but-nonexistent doctor-patient relationships have been reported in Oregon. Although a patient's requests for assisted suicide purportedly must span a 15-day period, official Oregon reports indicate that, over the last seven years, some patients have died by suicide having known their assisting doctors for a week or less.
What about that 15-day waiting period? Simple political expediency, as Kathryn Tucker, Compassion & Choices director of legal affairs, acknowledged. Speaking at a 1997 forum in Seattle, Tucker said:
In my view, the Oregon measure, in some sense, became overly restrictive. It has a fifteen-day waiting period. And my own view of the federal constitutional claim is that a fifteen-day waiting period would be struck down immediately as unduly burdensome. As we've seen in the reproductive rights context, you can't have a waiting period of that kind of duration. But in the legislative forum, to pass, you need to have measures that convince people that it's suitably protective so you see a fifteen-day waiting period.
There are some who claim that, if he had lived in Oregon, Kevorkian would not have been able to carry out his style of assisted suicide in the state. They point to the fact that in many of his cases the deadly overdose was not provided orally but by infusion, and that Kevorkian was a pathologist who had not had a full-time position in the medical field for years. However, neither Kevorkian's method of assisted suicide nor his spotty credentials would have precluded his acting legally in Oregon.
Contrary to general perception, Oregon's law does not require that the lethal drugs be taken orally, only that someone else not administer a lethal injection. But only Youk's death—Kevorkian's last—was by lethal injection. The suicide contraptions that he used for earlier assisted suicides required the soon-to-be dead victims to self-administer, generally by pushing a lever triggering the flow of deadly drugs or carbon monoxide gas.
Once again, we see the possibility of this Kevorkian approach in Oregon. Tucker, in a 1996 interview with American Medical News, described a similar procedure and deemed it permissible under Oregon's law. Noting that self-administration is not limited to consuming drugs orally, she said:
I think that technology can make self-administration possible for a broad range of patients who would not have the wherewithal to self-administer otherwise. For example, there are certainly technologies that permit patients to do things by voice activation of a computer that could generate an infusion of medication. That can be self-administration.
Thus, according to one of the Oregon statute's most fervent supporters, Kevorkian's method of assisted suicide would apparently not violate state law.
But what about Kevorkian's lack of medical experience in examining and treating patients? Kevorkian was a pathologist who did not treat patients after his medical school and residency days in the 1950s. If he had held an Oregon medical license (rather than Michigan and California licenses which were revoked because he was engaging in illegal assisted suicides), Kevorkian would have been within his rights under the law to act as an "attending physician" who could legally carry out assisted suicide. You see, in Oregon, any licensed physician—including any dermatologist, ophthalmologist, or pathologist—can write lethal prescriptions. It doesn't really take a lot of medical savvy to prescribe a deadly dose. To paraphrase the Geico commercial, "It's so easy even an unemployed pathologist can do it."
There are some differences, however, between Jack Kevorkian and Oregon doctors who carry out assisted suicide. In upcoming months, the Oregon docs will go ahead assisting suicides. Jack Kevorkian can't do that and stay out of jail. But he has other plans. According to reports, he's scheduled to hit the speaking circuit where he'll be commanding fees of $50,000 to $100,000. Who says crime doesn't pay?
Rita L. Marker is an attorney and executive director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. Wesley J. Smith is an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.


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It's a family tradition
Small Business of the Year runner-up
Crayton Commercial LLC
Headquarters: New Bern
President: Walt Crayton
Employees: One
Founded: 2008
Projected 2013 revenue: $756,000
Business: Commercial real estate
My dad always told me, he said, 'Don't you ever get in this business,'" Walt Crayton says, reminiscing about a childhood spent cleaning construction sites for his father's development company. "He said to me, 'But if you have to get in this business, do something commercial.'" Walt ignored the first part of Frank Crayton's warning but took to heart the second. Today, the younger Crayton is owner and president of Crayton Commercial LLC, a one-man operation in New Bern that has built or revitalized seven shopping centers since 2008. Last year, then-Gov. Beverly Perdue appointed him to the nine-member N.C. Real Estate Commission, the state's regulator of real-estate agents. Not bad for a guy who started his company at 25 and is now 31.
"You know, when you're little, you don't even know what words like commercial mean. At least I didn't. My dad just ingrained that into my head. He said, 'Do something big, do something commercial — that is, if you have to do it at all.'" But Frank telling Walt to stay away from development would be like Hank Williams Jr. asking Hank III to avoid country music. Paul W. Crayton Sr., Walt's grandfather, founded New Bern-based Crayton & Company LLC in 1950. Frank and brother Skip have kept it going since their father's death in 1995. Walt's company shares a building with Crayton & Co. "I was raised in a small business, entrepreneurial environment, and it really is in my blood," says Crayton, who graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in 2004 with a business-administration degree.
After working two years for Norcom Development Inc. in Charlotte, he was hired by Robert B. Tucker, founder of Concord-based Shoe Show Inc. Tucker has grown the retail chain to more than 1,100 stores by buying and developing shopping centers, often in the shadow of big-box retailers. He would put his company in one storefront and lease the rest. "I mean, what an opportunity," Crayton says. "I was in my early 20s, and here I was with the owner of a company with an annual revenue of more than $1 billion, hearing him tell stories about how hard it was starting out and what he had to do." Crayton was responsible for leasing space in Shoe Show-owned shopping centers.
"Walt was just real aggressive in getting those vacancies occupied, and he stayed after a good deal when he saw it," Tucker says. When Crayton told his boss in late 2007 that he wanted to strike out on his own, Tucker knew his young pupil would be successful. "I didn't have any doubt about it. You have to have the desire, and he has it."
But Crayton didn't foresee the looming economic meltdown. "When I decided I was going to do this in the fall of 2007, things were rocking and rolling. Even when I started the business in late January of 2008, things still weren't that bad yet. You could see the economy was starting to slip, but I had no idea. I guess if I could have seen the future, I'd probably still be working for Shoe Show." He allocated $20,000 of savings for startup costs — a 400-square-foot office, second-hand furniture, computer, a phone line — and a cushion to carry him through a couple of years of no profit. He didn't make one in 2008 but was able to lease space for other developments, generating $7,977 while setting up projects for the next year. "It's a long process to put a shopping center together before it even breaks ground, much less is completed and stores open for business. You have to identify the property, negotiate the purchase and contract, go through all the permitting, zoning and architecture, put the construction bids together, get all your financing straight." By 2009, Crayton had secured about $4 million in development loans to build two shopping centers, one in Havelock and the other in Reidsville. Revenue jumped to $346,799 but dipped the following year before steadily increasing to $543,006 in 2012.
Crayton doesn't deal with high-profile shopping centers with all the bells and whistles. He looks for the oldest, most dilapidated shopping centers in sometimes sketchy places and turns them into attractive, no-frills commercial spaces for discount retailers such as Dollar Tree, Roses and, of course, Shoe Show. Taking a cue from Tucker, Crayton searches for ones near big-name stores. He'll purchase a property for, say, $500,000, put $2 million into it and then lease out spaces for revenue of about $300,000 a year. "This is going to sound cheesy," Crayton says, "but I just think it's cool to find something that's so run-down and such an eyesore and be able to transform that, put people to work and have customers able to shop, have people working in stores, have a finished product that looks so much better than when it started."
— Mark Kemp—


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From governing.com:
Citizen engagement has traditionally been viewed as citizens participating in community activities such as testifying on policy proposals, budgets and strategic plans. But government does more than policy and budgets. And citizens want to do more than testify or volunteer at the local food bank.
How can state and local governments engage their citizens in ways that are more meaningful–and fun–to both the citizens and their communities? A series of pioneering initiatives holds promise that this now can be done on a much wider scale.
A new study explores the growing phenomena of engaging citizens in the co-delivery of services. "The rise and increasing pervasiveness of digital social media–Facebook, Twitter–have dissolved the many technical barriers to widespread and sustained citizen involvement in actually co-producing and co-delivering public services," note the study's authors, P.K. Kannan and Ai-Mei Chang of the University of Maryland.
The rise of the millennial generation as it enters adulthood reinforces this new phenomenon, since millennials tend to be both tech-savvy and service-oriented. The private sector spotted this trend several years ago and pioneered a number of successful ways to engage customers. One well-known example is the LEGO Digital Designer, a website where children can design new models and compete with each other online. Another is Intuit's TurboTax live community, where customers provide advice and help to each other, with those who are most helpful being ranked higher on the site.
Of course, the co-delivery of public services has been around for a long time–just think of volunteer fire departments, citizen juries and neighborhood watch groups. But today technology allows many new paths for engagement. The authors of the study identify points in the policy cycle where citizens can now become engaged:
Policy or program design. Co-design initiatives give citizens the chance to participate in the development of a new policy or service. These types of efforts are usually time-bound, with a beginning and an end point. These are also the closest to the traditional view of what constitutes citizen engagement. For example, Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent C. Gray holds periodic community summits, such as one held last year to have citizens in one of the city's wards propose and review potential economic-development investments by the city in their neighborhoods.
Developing and providing services. Another type of co-production initiative involves engaging citizens–as individuals or groups—in designing or delivering a service. In youth courts, for example, first-time, non-violent offenders serve as juries that try other offenders, with the goal of reducing recidivism. Another example is the mobile smartphone app, SeeClickFix, which allows citizens in participating cities and counties to report non-emergency issues (graffiti, broken street lights, potholes) and then track the local government's response.
Co-delivered services can be short-term transactions, such as the IRS' annual tax assistance program staffed by volunteers, or they can be long-term relationships, such as the Harlem Children's Zone initiative, which involves professionals, volunteers from the community and public servants working to rebuild the community's social, health, economic and educational environment to give children a better chance to develop into productive citizens.
How do you get people to participate? Oftentimes, government leaders want to engage citizens but the citizens don't respond, or the response comes from only a small segment that doesn't necessarily represent the broader community. What can be done to encourage greater, and more sustained, participation?
A key element is how the initiative is designed. One strategy being pioneered is the use of game-design technology. An advocate of that approach is Nicole Lazzaro, a professional game designer who says that game-based technology "can be a powerful organizer of human action and engagement." She offers as an example a website sponsored by the gaming community, Games for Change, that addresses national and local challenges such as obesity, education and climate change. For example, a climate-change-awareness game in Vermont pits individual towns against each other in a game to win a Ben and Jerry's ice cream party.
"Getting the incentives right for citizens to participate in a co-delivery initiative is important," says Lazzaro. Kannan and Chang agree that understanding and responding to what motivates people is key. I'd think that the folks in Vermont have got it right: Ice cream would be a great motivator.


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Daikin the global leader, innovator and provider of advanced air conditioning solutions for residential, commercial and industrial applications has introduced the new WCT 6,000 water- cooled centrifugal chiller which is the most efficient and largest commercial capacity district cooling chiller in the world.
With cooling capacities up to 6,000TR (tones of refrigeration) WCT chillers provide industry-leading efficiencies, resulting in low operating costs and excellent return on investment.
"Chiller compressor design is a key factor to attain highest levels of sustainable plant room energy efficient performance, that's why Daikin McQuay's WCT 6,000TR system includes a pair of two-stage centrifugal chillers arranged in series-counter flow to reach the high lift typically required in district cooling systems. The two-stage centrifugal compressors have inter-stage flash economizers that increase the life of the unit" said Mr. Maged Makar, Business Development Manager at Daikin McQuay Middle East
As energy demands and costs rise, district cooling plants for offices, industry and homes need to be increasingly efficient, reliable and sustainable. WCT chillers represent the most recent product in a long line of innovative solutions from Daikin McQuay, seeing that they are considered experts in delivering district cooling systems across the Middle East.
"This unique and innovative 'back-to-back' impeller design results in a 67% reduction in thrust load, improved reliability and longer bearing life. Additionally, diffuser control avoids surging, resulting in a 10% efficiency increase at part loads, when compared with hot gas bypass. Furthermore each compressor operates at a lower head, thus increasing the energy performance at full load" added Mr. Makar.
"We are thrilled to launch the WCT 6,000TR chiller ! WCT concept is based on extensive market research taking into account the wishes of many stakeholders in the industry: Designers, Installers, Owners and Regulators. WCT is destined to lead the district cooling industry in the Middle East, establishing new standards in efficiency and environmental responsibility. While offering faster payback for DC investors and easier installations for EPC contractors, WCT will also insure that consumption of subsidized electrical energy is minimized. We can cool our cities today, while preserving the environment for the future generation" .commented Mr. François Boueri – President of Daikin McQuay Middle East and Africa.
"Daikin McQuay offers full support to its clients at every stage of a project: planning, designing, installing, operating and maintaining. We have established the highest efficiency trend on stand alone installations with the revolutionary Daikin VRV system. We will now do the same in the District Cooling segment with the birth of WCT .." concluded Mr. Boueri
At the design stage, Daikin and McQuay selection tools allow designers to create a tailored solution for any cooling project, with a large number of different combinations to obtain the best optimized solution for each building structure.


text:
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(Daytona, FL) Arai Helmets will field its biggest-ever group of NASCAR drivers and AMA Pro Racing motorcycle racers for both of the upcoming Daytona racing events: the Daytona 500 on February 26, and Bike Week racing a couple weeks later, March 15th to 17th.
The company said its NASCAR driver lineup, that began with just a couple drivers choosing its helmet, has turned into "an avalanche of drivers," according to Arai's Jeff Weil. "We had a few of the top Sprint Cup guys like Jeff Gordon for a while, and we've won a couple 500s with Gordon and Jamie McMurray. Then, in just the last year or so, it's gotten nuts." Weil said Arai now has 11 Sprint Cup drivers, three in the Nationwide Series, and two in the Camping World Truck Series where Arai has the current champion, Austin Dillon, who moved to the Nationwide Series for 2012.
On the Bike Week motorcycle side, Arai's AMA Pro field is equally strong. It's highlighted by two current road race champions, Josh Hayes in Superbike, and Danny Eslick in Daytona SportBike, plus perennial contenders and former champions like Blake Young, Martin Cardenas, and Jason DiSalvo. For the Daytona Short Track races, Arai's very-deep field will be led by two more current champions: Jake Johnson, GNC national champion, and Michael Martin in Pro Singles.
"Between these two powerhouse line-ups, Arai could have an amazing Daytona, even though we know full well that racing's completely unpredictable," Weil added. "Put this potential together with Arai's claiming our fifth of the last seven Formula 1 world championships with Sebastian Vettel, and another IndyCar championship with Dario Franchitti, and you can't blame us for being a little pumped up—especially for such a comparatively small helmet company."


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Toast, cereal and… Mountain Dew?
Yup, the soda — or at least, a drink that shares its name — could become part of your morning routine. PepsiCo wants to round out your breakfast with Kickstart, a new Mountain Dew-flavored drink packed with caffeine, 5% real fruit juice and Vitamins B and C.
Mountain Dew representative Elisa Baker told the Los Angeles Times that their customers were looking for an alternative to traditional morning beverages, such as coffee and tea. The company did extensive research into the possibilities, and apparently found that a lot of crazy people want to drink soda in the morning.
"Kickstart combines the best of all worlds — it tastes great, has just the right amount of real fruit juice and gives them a kick to help them start their day," she said.
(WATCH: Coca-Cola Launches Anti-Obesity Ad)
The soda maker said it doesn't think of Kickstart as an energy drink. At 92 milligrams of caffeine per 16 oz. can, Kickstart has 20 more milligrams than a comparable amount of Mountain Dew and about the same amount as a cup of coffee. Rockstar, a popular energy drink brand, boasts a whopping 276 milligrams of caffeine in each of its 24-ounce cans.
Proving their dedication to a healthy, balanced breakfast, PepsiCo made sure to cut Kickstart's sugar content by using artificial sweeteners. Each can has 80 calories, about half the amount in a regular soda.
Though PepsiCo calls Kickstart juice, flavors like "energizing orange citrus" and "energizing fruit punch" toe the energy drink line. With that distinct Mountain Dew taste, kids everywhere will see Kickstart for what it really is: Soda for breakfast. And we're pretty sure they'll be lining up for its Feb. 25 release.


text: Rose Beginner's Guide http://gamerips.gamemusic.us R.O.S.E Beginner's Guide by Grawl grawler (@t) gmail (d0t) com 01/25/05 - Version 0.3 irc.xelium.net #roseon ============================================================================== Donations ============================================================================== It seems thousands of players enjoy my guide, seeing the countless mails I receive. This makes me very happy, since it means my guide actually has some use ;p So I'm asking you, if you're enjoying this guide, could you perhaps donate some money? Heck, I'll be happy with your 2 bucks you were going to spent on a cheeseburger later ;p Thank you! http://www.donategrawl.cjb.net ============================================================================== Introduction ============================================================================== Every question, feedback, comment etc. can be mailed. Put "R.O.S.E Guide" in the Subject, so I can pick out the mails easily. Thanks! Also add where you found the guide, if possible, so I know what places attract the mainstream. Don't mail me with: * Stuff that is covered in this FAQ * Complaining how bad the game is according to you * If your PC will run R.O.S.E If I get any of these mails, I'll ignore them, no matter how harsh it sounds. Do mail me with: * Stuff that is not covered in this FAQ * Comment, questions, feedback and fan mail * Asking if you can put this guide on your site Feel free to join your R.O.S.E IRC channel: irc.xelium.net #roseon I'm not related to Gravity. This FAQ has been made for fun, not to make any money out of it. Don't use this FAQ on your site/magazine etc. without my permission. Copyright (c) 2004 by Grawl. I keep my own list of sites that are allowed to publish this guide. If the site isn't in the list, I'll go after it and get it removed one way or another. To make searching easier, I added search-codes in the TOC. Just press CTRL + F and enter the code to jump to that part immediately. ============================================================================== Table of Contents [MS.00.00] ============================================================================== * Table of Contents.................................................[MS.00.00] * History & Next Version............................................[MS.01.01] * Introduction & Getting Started....................................[MS.02.01] * Creating a Character..............................................[MS.03.01] * Learning the Game.................................................[MS.04.01] * Monsters..........................................................[MS.05.01] * FAQ...............................................................[MS.06.01] * Conclusion........................................................[MS.07.01] ============================================================================== History & Next Version [MS.01.01] ============================================================================== Version 0.1 (01/04/05) - First version, everything is new ;p (12,5KB) Version 0.2 (01/15/05) - Changed a few small things, added a thing here and there. (14,0KB) Version 0.3 (01/25/05) - Very small update. On the side note, it snowed. (15,1KB) ============================================================================== Introduction & Getting Started [MS.02.01] ============================================================================== R.O.S.E (Rush On Seven Episodes) is a brand new MMORPG. It's created by the studio that created Ragnarok Online; one of the most famous MMORPGs out there. Some others claim Gravity only publishes it. Whatever the truth it, it's currently still in the beta phrase, which means you can play the game for free. That's right. You play the game, report bugs, and you can play for free. Doesn't that sound great? R.O.S.E is 3D, and... it reminds me of Lineage 2 a lot. Why? Because they pretty much stole the whole interface, and system. So if you played Lineage 2, I'm sure you'll be able to play this game without too much trouble. So, the interface looks like Lineage 2, but the graphics don't. The graphics remind me of Worms 3D. Happy graphics, if you know what I mean. The music gets quite annoying, but you can always play something else on the background. That's pretty much all I have to say. The game will much better, because they'll add stuff, and why not give it a shot? It's free. So, what do you need for R.O.S.E? Let me give the system requirements: Minimum - Pentium III 800 MHz, 128MB RAM, GeForce 2MX 400/Radeon 7000 Recommended - Pentium III 1 GHz, 256MB RAM, GeForce 3 Ti 200 Got that, good. Then register an account over at www.roseon.com; http://iroseon.com/member/join_age.asp You need to enter some info, and confirm a mail you'll get. After that, download the game here; http://iroseon.com/Pds/Down.asp Download the client in either EXE or ZIP. Whatever suits you. If you have no idea what it means, just get the EXE-version. Install the game once it's downloaded, and you're ready to go. Almost... you probably need to spent another 15 minutes downloading patches, but that doesn't require anything from you, but patience. ============================================================================== Creating a Character [MS.03.01] ============================================================================== Once you logged in, you can create your first character. Or, if you already have one, continue with that one. You can select the gender, faces, hair and whatnot. Although it looks like you can create your unique character, you can't. There already are thousands of players, so without expensive equipment, you'll look like a few hundreds of others ;p ============================================================================== Learning the Game [MS.04.01] ============================================================================== I'll try to guide you through the first isle. It's nothing hard, but a little help probably wouldn't hurt, right? Once you started, you might want to get familiar with the controls, menu's etc. The left mouse button is your action button. You can talk with it, attack with it etc. If you hold the right mouse button, you can look around. The mouse wheel is used for zooming around. Let me also describe the menu's for you: * Character (ALT+A) - Check your basic information and status * Inventory (ALT+I) - Check your items, and equip them. * Skills (ALT+S) - Check your skills. You have basic skills, which you get as visitor (when you have no rank), active skills (which you have to activate) and passive skills (which will always work). * Quests (ALT+Q) - Check your current quests. Some will have to be completed within a certain time, which you can also check here. * Help (ALT+H) - Like you need help with this guide ;p * Options (ALT+O) - Options. Change the settings if you want. * Exit (ALT+X) - Sick of the game? Quit it. Also used to select another character. * Mini-Map (ALT+M) - Minimize/enlarge/close mini-map. Next to that, you can also set hotkeys. For example, you can drag the "sit" skill (which is labelled as "shit" in early versions of the game) to F1, and when you press F1, you'll sit down. I recommend dragging Sit to F1, and Gather to F2. You won't have to manually grab the items now, just press F2 after each battle to grab them. Walk a bit away from where you started. You'll see two faries. If you talk to them, they'll explain the world to you. Not just that, but most things will give you experience. Just by talking to them. So ask everything you can. You'll learn how to world works, and level up. Once you levelled up, you can set certain points. Go to your character menu, and find it somewhere around there. You can put points in Strength, Dexterity etc. It depends on your job what deserves the points. If you want to be a Soldier, why would you need something that gives you better magical attack? Get the point? Talk to the fairy if you don't know what each skill does. However, for now, put all your points in STR. Why? Because you'll be stuck with a melee weapon until you reach lvl. 10, and in Zant, you can reset your points, as long as you're lvl. 15 or below. Get it? So everything to STR, and once you reached Zant, you'll reset it, and put the points in something you really want. You can become these classes: * Soldier - Strong, and can use about any weapon to inflict damage. (STR, CON) * Muse - The magician of R.O.S.E. (INT, DEX) * Hawker - Want to become a pirate? Go for this class. They mainly use bows. (CON, DEX) * Dealer - Buy products at a low price, and sell them for a higher price. They can also craft their own items, and sell them. (CON, SEN) STR - Strength, affects Max HP, power of melee attacks, defense, and weight limit. DEX - Dexterity, moving speed, ranged attacks and dodging ability. INT - Intelligence, affects Max MP, attack power of magical weapons, magic attack, and magic resistance. CON - Concentration, accuracy, crafting success rate, recovery speed of HP and MP as well as power of guns. CHA - Charisma, affects conditions for quests. Quest rewards, conditions for fullfilling, and overall difficulty of the quest. SEN - Sensibility - influences your other, not so important abilities, such as crafting items, critical attack rate, quality of crafted items, and skill damage (to a lesser extent). So once you know what you want to become, and decided what you need for that, let's continue. If you had a chat with the fairy, you'll gave experience, but also a few healing items (bananas and whatnot) and new equipment. Be sure to equip the stuff, because it'll come in handy. Now what? It's time to battle. If you select a monster, the name will have a certain color. If it's green, it'll be an easy kill. If it's yellow/orange, it can be a tough fight, and purple means you should avoid the fight at all costs. In order of toughness, you should battle butterflies, little jelly beans, little choropies, jelly beans, choropies, jelly nut, royal jellies. But before you go, you can get a quest from a fairy. You'll have to return some items from various enemies. Once you did all the quests, you'll gain some new stuff, so be sure to do the quests. Check the part below to see the information about monsters. Now it's all a matter of patience. It's easy to level up here, and if you're lucky, you'll even find new equipment. I found a bamboo stick (better weapon than your little sword), red shoes and a few gloves. However, the enemies around here don't drop rare stuff like Iron Threads. Especially at lower levels, it's easy to get them. So when you reached lvl. 4, leave the isle, and go to the real world. If you want to do that, talk to the fairy, and tell her you want to leave. And that's where I'll leave you. Just a few more hints though; * Kill Choropies at a low level to find Iron Threads. DO NOT SELL THEM! Well, not for cheap. They are worth 1k to 2.5k, and selling it to a NPC is a waste, and some players will try to scam you. Just keep the price in the back of your head, because the items are hard to find. The same goes for Bird Feathers later on. * Find the old man near where you start, he'll give you free fruit. As long as you're lvl. 8 or below, that is. * Talk to Grey, he'll have a quest for you. You'll need to go to Zant for that, but you'll have to go there to get a job anyway. * Get to level 10, and go to Zant. You can go there by heading northwest from the first screen, and north from the second screen. Talk to Warren to get more information about getting a job. You can also buy some nice equipment in Zant. And that's it. Good luck in the game. If you need help, feel free to mail me. ============================================================================== Monsters [MS.05.01] ============================================================================== This is just a list of the monsters on the isle where you begin, for the record. Butterflies - Easy target, and they won't attack back. Little Jelly Bean - Although they are an easy target, they'll drop some nice stuff for you. Including equipment. Little Choropy - A small worm, or whatever it is. They are brown, and you shouldn't mistake them with the normal Choropy. Jelly Bean - The harder version of the Little Jelly Bean. Jelly Nut - A tiny bit harder than the Jelly Bean. Choropy - A worm, and it's green. And a bit though if you don't watch out. Royal Jelly - The strongest Jelly, but it'll be a good source for items and experience. ============================================================================== FAQ [MS.06.01] ============================================================================== Q: I have a question... A: Mail them to me. Q: I encountered a bug! A: Let Gravity know about it, so they can fix it. Q: What's so special about the Iron Threads and Bird Feathers? A: They are used to craft wings. If you want to be a dealer, keep the items. If not, go to Zant, and sell them there. You can get 2k for each Iron Thread and Bird Feather. Yes, 5 Iron Threads will give you 10k. That's a nice budget, isn't it? Q: Where should I level up, even at later levels? A: Lvl 1 - 4: Birth Isle Lvl 5 - 10: Adventure Plains Lvl 11 - 15: Formics Lvl 15 - 20: Woopies Lvl 20 - 25: Beetle Bugs Lvl 25 - 30: Queen BeeBees (or help to kill the Aqua King in Elveroon) Lvl 30 - 35: Aquas Lvl 35 - 40: Grunters Lvl 40+: Go to the forest, beach, or even to another planet. Q: When can I get a second job? And what are they? A: At lvl. 70, you can get a second job. For more information, wait until I released in-depth guides (a guide for soldiers and one for dealers) is coming up. Visit the site of R.O.S.E in the meantime. Q: Grawl, I'm got a question that's very urgent. A: Join your IRC chan, others can help you out too. irc.xelium.net #roseon ============================================================================== Conclusion [MS.07.01] ============================================================================== I hope you enjoyed my guide, since I put a lot of work in it. If you encounter problems, feel free to mail me. Also suggestions, feedback, comment etc. are accepted, the mail addy is on top of this file. Thanks-list: N/A And especially you, for reading this. For other guides, you can check this link: http://members.home.nl/grawl/guides/ http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/recognition/13739.html ============================================================================== Copyright (c) 2004 by Grawl. All rights reserved.


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Curled up on a couch Wednesday night just inside the open doors of the Cuba Ocho Art and Research Center in the heart of Miami's Little Havana are Roberto Ramos, and his wife, Yeney Farinas-Ramos. They own this 5,700-square foot gallery and cultural center and they are exhausted, enjoying their first real moment since a chaotic Election Day. They began to relax, drink a little red wine, and reflect on how embarrassed they are to be residents of Florida right about now.
Tuesday was supposed to mark the first time Ramos had ever cast a ballot as an American citizen, even though he has been in the United States for 20 years and eligible to do so for 12. He didn't vote before because he didn't believe in it, he says in Spanish, because in his country—the one he fled in 1992 in a weathered skiff with two friends and 13 antique Cuban paintings—voting was a joke and a waste of time.
But Farinas-Ramos talked her husband into giving American democracy a chance. In this country, your vote counts, she convinced him. Here, you get to choose who runs the government. So Ramos took time out of a very busy day, marched down to his precinct, and got in line.
That line wasn't anywhere near as bad as it was in some places. Voters across Miami-Dade county and across the state had been standing in lines for hours at a time for the better part of two weeks, thanks to two key factors: the Republican Legislature's passage this year of a bill that cut the number of days Floridians could vote early in this year's election from 14 to eight, and a ballot that was 10 pages long.
Late Saturday, Florida Democrats sued to force several county elections offices to extend early voting, and the compromise reached only made the situation more confusing, the lines longer.
Voters who missed out on the chance to cast early votes could come to the election supervisors' offices, pick up an absentee ballot, fill it out on the spot, and turn it in, right there. So people showed up to do just that on Sunday and Monday, all over the state, only to find themselves waiting in lines for four to eight hours. Some didn't get to vote until 2 a.m.
All that chaos was supposed to mean things went more smoothly on election day, but it didn't. The bulging ballots and overwhelmed precincts led to more long lines, and more marathon wait times.
Ramos's wait in Little Havana was an hour and a half, so he considered himself lucky. When he got into the polling booth, he pretended to be bewildered about whom to choose, and demanded the precinct worker tell him. She refused, he said, but then smiled, and pointed at her forearm, at her brown skin. Not the white guy.
Ramos got the point. But he didn't get to vote. The registration card mailed to him instructed him to cast his ballot at the precinct close to Cuba Ocho, not the one near his home in Pasa Robles, where he was actually supposed to vote, he said. After standing in line all that time, he needed to get back to his business.
This country was supposed to be different.
"It's a mess," Farinas-Ramos said. "I came to this country because we wanted to be in charge of who we elect. This is embarrassing."
And it's not over, either. By Thursday morning, elections officials in Miami-Dade were still counting ballots and making excuses. And even after the absentee ballots had been fully tabulated, Miami-Dade county still doesn't expect to have things wrapped up until Friday.
Meanwhile, the rest of the country has moved on. Obama was declared the winner Tuesday night and Florida was declared a laughingstock, just like it was in the hanging chad days of 2000. Newspapers and talk-show hosts across America are mocking the Sunshine State mercilessly.
And Floridians, especially those who escaped countries whose own approach to citizen participation is laughable, do not find this funny.
"It is an outrage," said Max Castro, puffing on a cigar in a shop down the street from Cuba Ocho. On the end table next to him sat a copy of El Nuevo Herald, with the headline "Obama Reelecto," and below that, "La Florida se inclina por el Presidente."
Too close to call.
"Republicans tried to make it hard for people of color, people who have to work and people who are Democrats," Castro said. "But on a scale of things I find outrageous in this state, and this legislature, it's just another outrage."
It's not just Democrats who are angry. Miami attorney Eric Padron put on his finest suit Tuesday and headed to the polls as the self-described "die-hard Republican" does every election. The son of Cuban exiles arrived at 6:30 a.m., he said, thinking he'd have the jump. He stood in line for four hours. And he blames Republicans, squarely, for the mess in Florida.
"Republicans have to realize you cannot win elections if you try to reduce the number of early voting days and curtail the opportunities of people to vote," he said. "If you want to win, be the majority party. Your message, your ideology, your politics have to appeal to that 51 percent. You can do all the shenanigans you want, but what does it gain you? Nothing. It makes you a laughingstock."
The upside to Florida's election madness, believes Miami Democrat and Cuban-American Lourdes Diaz, is that these attempts at voter suppression actually fired up Obama's base, especially among Latinos from countries that have seen their rights to participate in government trampled. Part of the reason the lines were so long here, every step of the way, is because these precincts were caught flat-footed by overwhelming turnout—turnout inspired by all the efforts to quell it.
"Oh, you don't want us to vote?" Diaz said. "We're going to show you. We're Latinos. We lost our country. It's not going to happen again."


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Mommy Connections – Newborn Photography Calgary
We are always excited when Mommy Connections has a new mom and baby class because this means we get the opportunity to photograph the new mom's with their little ones. This time we visited 3 classes which are organized by Katherine Doland, the Director of Mommy Connections Calgary South and her team.
Each of the sessions that Mommy Connections puts on are an excellent way for new mom's to get out, meet other mom's and learn about some of the amazing services available to them and their little one. The sessions this week were held at "Play A Latte' where moms enjoyed coffee and watching their kids plan on the indoor jungle gyms and equipment. The second place we visited was Crossings Dance Studio where the classes learned about CPR and took a ballet class.
Facebook Image Gallery
If you requested to have your image posted to Facebook we have a gallery on our Facebook page where you can tag yourself in your photo and share it with your family and friends.
Secure Online Gallery
The online gallery is linked below is private and password protected. The gallery will be hosted for 30 days and from the gallery you are able to download a free digital copy of your image or purchase any prints you may want of your image. As mentioned above the gallery is secure and the password will be provided in an email by Katherine.
Online Gallery Link:
A Couple of our Favourite Photos
We are so fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Mommy Connections. Huge thank you to Katherine for including us in her program, we always have so much fun.
Want to share in the experience? Contact us today to book your session or to set up your free wedding consultation with Jeremy!
Images by JM Photography – Newborn Photography Calgary © 2015
Session Details
Mommy Connections Week | June 2015
Newborn Photography Calgary by Amy Cheng
JM Photography offers Calgary families the very best in portrait photography! Our unique style and best in class experience is one of a kind. Each session is treated with the greatest of care and creativity, resulting in breathtaking imagery. We also offer Calgary newborn photography, capture maternity sessions, portraits and Calgary Wedding Photography.
We are one of the top studios in Western Canada, servicing the Calgary area, including but not limited to, Canmore, Banff, Cochrane, Chestermere, Airdrie, Lethbridge, and Red Deer. We also offer coverage in Edmonton, Vancouver and to destinations worldwide.


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Since Tuesday, B.C. has recorded just over 1,100 new COVID-19 infections, as well as four more deaths.
Broken down by day, 536 people tested positive for the novel coronavirus between Tuesday to Wednesday, and a further 594 people were diagnosed between Wednesday and Thursday.
In a news conference on Nov. 12, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said 808 of those new cases are of people who reside in Fraser Health, followed by 249 people in Vancouver Coastal, 34 in Interior Health, 23 in Northern Health and 16 on Vancouver Island.
ALSO READ: Vancouver Island sees first COVID-19 outbreak after staff test positive at Nanaimo hospital
Of the four people who died, three lived in longterm care and the fourth was an elderly person within an unknwon community. A total of 288 people have died due to COVID-19 this year.
As B.C. sees an ongoing surge in new cases, hospitalizations are also increasing, Henry said. Of the 5,793 active confirmed cases Thursday, 155 people are in hospital – 44 of whom are in critical or intensive care.
A total of 20,369 cases have been confirmed in B.C. since January.
More to come.
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This article is more than 1 year old
Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx: A (free) Mactastic experience
Command-line interfaces are for nerds
Bite out of Apple media
The other elements of the Me Menu are decidedly more fun, offering quick access to Gwibber, which makes a great social networking clients, and Empathy for connecting to various chat networks.
The Ubuntu One Music Store is also making its prime-time debut in this release. It offers a way to purchase DRM-free music directly through Rhythmbox, Ubuntu's default music player.
Unfortunately, while the music store itself is fine - I especially like that when you buy music it's automatically synced to the cloud via Ubuntu One - the selection that comes from 7Digital leaves much to be desired. The Ubuntu One Music store is nice addition for Ubuntu and I look forward to seeing it expand. But it's definitely not the iTunes Store just yet.
Movies make their debut with a timeline editor and tools
Of course, the lackluster selection has far more to do with music industry politics and licensing issues than any shortcoming of Ubuntu's, but it does nevertheless reflect on the store.
At least Ubuntu's music store delivers MP3 files rather than Ogg, which - while popular with Linux fans - isn't supported by the iPod (technically, some models can be hacked to run the Rockbox firmware, which does support Ogg).
The fact that Ubuntu One is tightly integrated with Rhythmbox is nice for GNOME fans, but this means other music players are left out of the fun. Canonical says the music store will eventually be available also as a plug-in for Banshee, Amarok, and "a few other" Linux music applications. But for now, it's Rhythmbox or the high road.
There's also a brand new movie editor making its debut in this release of Ubuntu. The Pitivi video editor offers an iMovie-like timeline editor with all the basic video editing tools. Pitivi can handle anything GStreamer supports, so make sure you install all the additional GStreamer plugins available.
I imported movies from three different cameras - both AVI files and AVCHD. The AVIs worked without issue. The newer camera's .mts AVCHD files seemed to import successfully, but I wasn't able to play or edit them. Curiously, the files played just fine in Movie Player, which means the problem was most likely not in GStreamer, but with Pitivi itself. If you've got a camera shooting AVCHD, you may need to look elsewhere, but Piviti will do the job otherwise.
The new Ubuntu Software Center features a completely redesigned interface for finding and installing software. The new look maker Ubuntu Software Center a bit more user friendly and almost App-Store-like in its design and layout.
The redesigned Software Center offers and app-store-like design and layout
The basic GNOME apps all see updates in this release as well. Firefox, OpenOffice, and Evolution have all been updated to latest version.
Those that consider GUIs bloat and think a good user experience involves green monospaced fonts on a pure black terminal window will not be pleased with the new Ubuntu. Unfortunately, from the looks of things, you are Ubuntu's past. The real world of everyday, dare I say ordinary, computer users are Ubuntu's future.
The default human theme may be gone, but the emphasis on "Linux for everyone" remains well intact at the Ubuntu camp. Overall, Ubuntu 10.04 is certainly one of the most polished looking Linux distros on the market. With built-in cloud syncing, a new music store and quick access to social networks, Ubuntu is clearly aiming at the mainstream audience and you can expect that trend to continue. ®